Tag Archives: Space Shuttle

A beautiful photo! SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon, which will carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) is on the launchpad with the new astronaut walkway ahead of the first major test flight.

Have you ever wondered why NASA chose Cape Canaveral to launch rockets? NASA’s most important rocket launches including the Mercury program, Project Gemini, the Moon Missions, and Space Shuttle lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

In fact, at the first look, Florida doesn’t look like a convenient place for rocket launches: the southeasternmost state gets hit by lightning more than anywhere in the United States. And getting hit by lightning is a very bad thing during a rocket launch Notes 1. What’s more, monster hurricanes frequently hit Florida (almost every year).

An amazing photo which was taken from the International Space Station showing the Space Shuttle Endeavour over Cook Strait, New Zealand. It was taken on November 25, 2002, as the space shuttle approaches the International Space Station (ISS) during STS-113 rendezvous and docking operations.

To able to reach the space, we need rockets. Rocket engines work by action and reaction (“To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction” Notes 1) and push rockets forward simply by expelling their exhaust in the opposite direction at high speed and can, therefore, work in the vacuum of space. Space rockets are usually enormous in size, because the bigger the rocket is, the more thrust can produce its engine and can carry more weight into the orbit. Here are the 10 tallest rockets ever launched in the history of space exploration.

On April 24, 1990, Hubble Space Telescope was launched into low Earth orbit from space shuttle Discovery (STS-31). It orbits the Earth at an altitude of about 350 miles (560 kilometers). For a comparison, the International Space Station (ISS) maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 205 and 270 miles (330 and 435 kilometers). The telescope is 43.5 feet (13.2 meters) long, weighs 24,500 pounds (11,110 kilograms).

NASA Astronaut Ricky Arnold published an amazing “selfie” from space on his Twitter account saying “An amazing view of our one and only planet”. He took this selfie during the May 16, 2018 spacewalk to perform upgrades on the International Space Station. We can see the Earth, the beautiful blue marble, reflecting on his helmet’s visor.

During the spacewalk which lasted for 6 hours and 31 minutes, Arnold and fellow NASA astronaut Andrew J. Feustel transferred a Pump Flow Control Subassembly over to Dextre stowed failed PFCS on ESP-1, replaced camera and lights used to film NASA TV, replaced Space to Ground Transceiver Controller, performed get aheads to Install handrails on Radiator Grapple Bars on S1, removed thermal blankets and MLI from two Direct Current Switching Units on ESP-2, and prepped the Flex Hose Rotary Coupler on S1 for replacement. Spacewalk suffered a 7-minute delay because of a water leak which formed ice crystals inside the airlock. The spacewalk brought Arnold’s cumulative EVA (Extravehicular activity) time to over 18 hours.

NASA Astronaut Andrew Jay “Drew” Feustel, who is currently living and working aboard the International Space Station, published a photo on his Twitter account with a replica of the “Moon Landscape” drawing by Holocaust victim Petr Ginz to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). The replica of the painting was first flown in space by Ilan Ramon (June 20, 1954 – February 1, 2003), the first Israeli astronaut for NASA. Ramon has died in the re-entry accident of STS-107, the fatal mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia. Ilan Ramon’s mother and grandmother were Auschwitz survivors, and his grandfather and other family members perished in Nazi death camps.

Feustel took with him to space a copy of a special drawing entitled “Moon Landscape”, which was created by a Jewish Czech boy named Petr Ginz (1 February 1928 – 28 September 1944) while incarcerated in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, during World War II. The drawing depicts how Earth would look from the surface of the moon. Petr was fascinated by science fiction and inspired by his favorite author, the French novelist, poet, and playwright Jules Verne (8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905), to draw and write stories about a far-off world he would never visit. At the age of 16, Petr lost his life at Auschwitz.

Tiangong-1, China’s falling space station will make an uncontrolled re-entry on late Sunday, April 1, or early Monday, April 2. But, there’s no need to panic: the risk is quite low that people on Earth will be in danger. Since two-thirds of Earth’s surface is covered by water, any remaining debris that doesn’t burn up in the atmosphere has a high chance of falling into an ocean. In fact, in every few years, uncontrolled spacecraft of this size enter the Earth’s atmosphere. For example, the 5,900-kilogram (13,000 lb) NASA-operated orbital observatory Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) decommissioned and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere on 24 September 2011. It ultimately impacted in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean, which is called Point Nemo. Some decommissioned spacecraft has returned so remotely that there was no visual evidence of their fall. So, the headlines of tabloid papers about Tiangong-1 crash are just sensational and click-bait.

There were uncontrolled reentries of even much larger spacecrafts in space exploration history. The biggest uncontrolled entry of a spacecraft was on February 1, 2003: the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven crew members.